The Headless Dinosaur Incident
by A. E. Stover
Summary: When Shisui accidentally cuts the head off of Sasuke's stuffed dinosaur, it is Itachi's duty to help his cousin escape cruel retribution at the hands of his twelve-year-old brother.


Sasuke had just gone to take Shiro out for a walk, so Itachi let himself indulge in a short afternoon nap in front of the garden. Today was the last day of his week off after a particularly demanding mission. He had another one soon; a long one- four to five months, he'd been told.

He'd dozed off for only ten minutes when he felt a familiar presence creep carefully through the garden. Itachi's eyes fluttered open.

"Shisui-?"

A cold spray of water from the garden hose hit him in the face.

It lasted only a second. Itachi flung the buckwheat pillow he was using to knock the hose out of Shisui's hand. There was a flicker as Shisui flashed away with a snicker just as Itachi appeared in the space Shisui had been. Acting quickly, Itachi grabbed the hose and turned around to spray water straight behind him. Standing an arm's length away was Shisui, who quickly formed a seal upon meeting eyes with him.

 _Cheater,_ Itachi thought, as he watched as the image of Shisui melted away into a clump of mud on the ground. Itachi distinctly recalled the consensus they'd come to years ago when coming up with this game that forbade any jutsu that wasn't teleportation.

His brief moment of thought was apparently all the time Shisui needed, because Itachi was tackled from behind. He landed on his stomach with a very wet plop, with mud slapping every inch of his neck and torso. It was only through sheer luck that his face wasn't completely splattered with mud, and the intimacy of knowing what it felt like to have mud somehow in his pants was enough for Itachi to decide that the peace of today was done.

"That's ten to eight! I'm still winning!" Shisui crowed while sitting on Itachi's back.

"I thought jutsu was grounds for disqualification."

" _I_ wasn't the one who used crows in our last game."

"...Fine."

Itachi sighed, blowing his hair out of his eyes. The mud on his shirt and clinging to his, well, everywhere… That needed to be washed off. He was grateful that his parents were away. His mother wouldn't have appreciated him tracking mud all over their tatami floor, and his father certainly would've given him an earful about still having an interest in children's' games.

And, given his current muddy state, Itachi found himself apt to agree this time around. "Shisui. Aren't we too old for this now?" Itachi wheezed when Shisui playfully dug an elbow into his back.

"Too old?! We're in our prime!" Shisui finally got off Itachi's back to sit beside him. He was grinning far too widely to be a twenty-some year old jounin sitting in the mud. "Besides, this is still training, in the most basic form. And you lost."

Wordlessly, Itachi lifted the hand holding the garden hose and clenched hard on the sprayer.

Shisui yelped. He was on his feet in an instant, coughing water out of his nose and lungs and shaking his hair. His coughing quickly turned to laughter. "Okay, okay, you got me. Are we even now?" he offered with a grin.

Instead of replying, Itachi twisted the setting on the hose to jet.

"Shit."

The strong stream of water shooting from the hose missed Shisui by an inch. Red bled into his vision; Itachi caught Shisui in a blur of movement that trailed from the garden to the window of a room on the second floor.

"Oi! Using your Sharingan is cheating! Ten to eight! The score's really ten to eight now-Whoa!"

Itachi had aimed the hose up and pressed down on the handle. He would've ever aim the hose that high, but Shisui didn't know that. Watching Shisui slam the window shut in panic gave Itachi enough satisfaction for him to overlook the rude wake-up call from earlier.

Knowing the game was over for now, Itachi took off his muddied shirt and hosed himself down right there in their garden. Again, there was another moment in which Itachi was thankful his parents had gone. This sort of behavior would hardly garner his father's appreciation.

Feeling the cold water under the summer heat encouraged him to entertain the thought of hosing the rest of him down, especially given the fact that his parents weren't here. But he didn't. He knew his limits.

That was a lie. He didn't because there was something curious on the ground. Something very green in the garden. Too green; like, "this isn't a natural color" kind of green. Hose still in hand, but not running with water, Itachi walked towards it.

It was the head of a stuffed dinosaur. He recognized it immediately; it was a doll he'd won for Sasuke at a spring festival years ago, when they were both so much younger. What in the world had happened to it…?

As if on cue, the window above creaked open.

"Uh, Itachi?" Shisui began hesitantly. He held out the other half of the dinosaur. Some of the white cotton fluff sprinkled out the window. "I sort of, accidentally… made this happen."

Itachi stared at him, without response. Do tell of how jumping into a child's room and shutting the window could have resulted in the swift (and messy) decapitation of a favorite childhood toy.

Shisui must have read his precise thoughts. "I must've shut the window too hard It was on the windowsill; I didn't think shutting the window on it would, you know, do _this_. Hey, do you think if we buried it in the garden Sasuke would never notice?"

Itachi took a moment to think about it. "Sasuke is quite attached to it. He brought it to the academy once to show his friends. He still takes it out every now and then too."

"...Are you fucking kidding me?"

"I'm afraid not."

There was a very brief moment in which a strangled look of panic graced Shisui's face. Then, he closed his eyes and took a deep breath. When he was done, Shisui looked calmly at the headless dinosaur in his hands. "Do you remember my thirteenth birthday?"

"The one when you made me go camping with you?"

"Aah."

"Even after I told you I had promised to take Sasuke to see the traveling circus?"

"Yeah."

"The day when we found out you were allergic to bees?"

"Yup."

"And then you woke up the next morning and your room was filled with bees?"

Shisui's grip on the dinosaur became shaky and taut. Just like the smile on his face. "...I'm a dead man."

"I wonder," Itachi continued, "was he also the one who put tacks in your shoes…?"

"ITACHI!"

The headless dinosaur crashed into Itachi's nose. The loose cotton stuffing made him sneeze.

"You have to help me!"

"Okay."

Shisui was out the window and back in the garden in one fluid motion. He grabbed the dinosaur and its head from Itachi's hands and held them tightly to his chest. "We need someone who can sew… Like a girl. What girl do we know who can sew?!"

"Um," said a voice neither of them recognized.

The two Uchiha whirled around to see a child with long, pink hair and wide, green eyes.

She looked frightened. Her words stuttered out in a terribly soft voice. "I-I was looking for Sasuke-kun… and I heard you talking, so I came over and… Well. _I_ can sew." The latter part was said louder, with more confidence. There was an assurance that also shone in her eyes, and she managed a smile.

Shisui bounded over to her in a style uncharacteristic of him. Itachi raised an eyebrow at his antics, which went ignored.

"Great!" Shisui cheered, practically throwing the mangled dinosaur at the young girl and guiding her into the house by the shoulders. "You're going to help us. I'll make some tea. Oh, just leave your shoes here; there's no genkan at the back door, so just put them... anywhere by the entrance. Do you have a tea preference? Green? Black? White? Oolong? There should still be some jasmine, if Itachi didn't dump it all in the koi pond… Just kidding. I was the one who did that. I hate jasmine. So did the koi, since they all died. I still mourn for them sometimes, you know."

"Um…."

Itachi silently followed them. He went to his room first, to finish washing himself off and to change into clean clothes. Halfway to the kitchen, Itachi heard a sharp barking and the hurried footsteps of a child who shouldn't have been back so soon, given Shiro's ADHD nature. He entered the kitchen. Shisui was holding a white teapot above a flame he was generating with his own chakra as Sakura, who was holding the dinosaur's head in her hands for _some_ reason, watched with an eager delight all genin seemed to possess when seeing any new jutsu.

"How do you know how hot the fire is? Is it proportional to how much chakra you're using?"

"That's a pretty good question. It depends on-"

"Sasuke's here," Itachi announced.

The fire under the teapot engulfed it, startling Sakura and ruining the tea. Shisui slammed the porcelain teapot onto the table to run to one of the cupboards and... started emptying it out.

"W-What's he doing? What's wrong? Is Sasuke-kun- O-Oh!" Sakura squeaked when Shisui pulled her away from the table. In seconds, the poor girl was whisked off her feet and raised into the air.

"Wait! W-What are you- Eep!"

Itachi watched Shisui shove a twelve year old girl into their now-empty cupboard.

"Sorry, just- Stay here! Don't say anything either!" And with that, Shisui shut the cupboard.

Shisui raced back to the table, bringing two teacups along with him. "Sit down," he hissed at Itachi, who calmly did as he was told. After eyeing the remains of the dinosaur, Shisui swiped it off the table, grabbed the hem of Itachi's shirt, lifted it up, and shoved it inside.

By the time Sasuke was thudding through the house, Shisui was sipping a cup of hot, burnt leaf juice while Itachi had scooted his chair further in so that the table could hide the lumpy mess under his shirt. In a moment, Sasuke rushed through the kitchen on his way to the back door. In his right hand were a pair of sandals thoroughly caked with mud.

Not surprisingly, Shisui didn't hesitate to comment first. "Whoa, what happened on your last mission? Did they send you all the way to the swamps, or something?"

Sasuke didn't say anything. He kicked the back door open and hastily started scraping the mud off his sandals and into the yard outside.

Shisui spoke again. "Someone's in a hurry. ...Ahaha, maybe he's got a hot date with Saku- _GURRK!_ "

Itachi watched Shisui choke on a piece of dry, flaky mud from the bottom of Sasuke's sandals.

"I'm going out," said Sasuke, probably to his brother. "Kakashi wants us all at the bridge. I might not be back in time for dinner, so-" Sasuke suddenly stopped talking.

The two older Uchiha in the kitchen watched him like a hawk.

Sasuke's brows furrowed together. He lifted a pair of sandals, identical to his except for the fact that these were spotless. "Is... _Sakura_ here?"

Shisui and Itachi looked at each other.

Sasuke's mouth became a thin, impatient line. "...Well?"

"We weren't supposed to tell you," Itachi began slowly, still keeping eye-contact with Shisui, "but Sakura came by earlier to ask Izumi about gift ideas for your birthday." He chuckled when he finally saw the sour look dawning on Sasuke's face. "Sorry. She was very convincing."

Sasuke's brow suddenly furrowed and the sour expression was gone. "I didn't know Izumi-san came back today."

Itachi didn't know she was even gone. Oops. But that did explain why he hadn't seen her during his week off.

Thankfully, his little brother was more fixated on the fact of Sakura's "annoying curiosity," as he once put it. Sasuke quickly turned back to scowling as he rummaged through his weapons pouch. "My birthday's not even for another three months," he said, not knowing that he still hadn't figured out how to hide the giveaway curve at the corner of his lips. He was smiling.

Shisui noticed it too. Surprisingly, he didn't comment on it. But then Itachi remembered the stuffed dinosaur underneath his shirt, and the girl in their cupboard.

"Do you have a mission today?" Itachi asked, changing the subject.

"I guess. Kakashi sent a message a few minutes ago. Weird, 'cause he told us he'd be too busy to train us the next few days…"

"Hokage-sama must have assigned your team to an urgent matter," said Itachi encouragingly.

Sasuke rolled his eyes again. "Yeah, to find the Daimyo's cat, maybe. Or find some kid's missing doll, or whatever."

Shisui coughed into his fist.

Sasuke narrowed his eyes. "Are you sick? You better not infect my brother. He's got an important mission tomorrow."

"You should get going, Sasuke. I'll make sure Sakura catches up with your team."

"Yeah. I'll be back…" Sasuke wrinkled his nose. "Whenever, I guess."

The back door shut with a clatter. The two Uchiha heard the chickens clucking as Sasuke made his way through the small garden in the back. Soon, they heard Shiro barking and yapping, indicative of Sasuke having finally passed around the house and leaving through the front gate.

Immediately, Shisui ran to the cupboard. He threw open the squeaking doors, revealing a very wide-eyed teenage girl stuffed uncomfortably on her side into the cupboard. Still in her small hands was the dinosaur's head. Shisui plucked it out of her hands without hesitation.

"Hey!" Sakura exclaimed when Shisui left her in the cupboard and returned to Itachi only with the dinosaur head.

"He's gonna flip if he sees this," Shisui muttered.

"We'll fix it."

"He hates me already. This just adds more fuel to the fire."

"We'll fix it, Shisui."

"I already ruined six of his birthdays, plus all those days where he thought I was stealing you away from him. Oh god-What if he starts being vindictive again? You remember how he got Tenzou to change the seal on my weapons scroll, don't you?!"

"Shisui-"

Shisui actually grabbed Itachi and shook him. "I can't go through another three years of that! I-I don't even know if it'll stop at three this time around-what if this goes on forever?!"

Wordlessly, Itachi reached over with both hands to cup Shisui's face. And squeeze his cheeks together.

"-Mmpbbffl?!" Caught off guard, Shisui dropped the dinosaur head to pull Itachi's hands off. "Quit it-I'm older than you, you know!"

"Then you should be more responsible!" shrieked someone they had forgotten all about. The two Uchiha turned back to the cupboard in surprise; Sakura was still in the cupboard.

Well, partially.

She had managed to stretch one of her legs out of the space, but was now stuck because she couldn't push her head and shoulders through. Her neck was bent at an angle that, even to the most flexible jounin, looked to be quite painful.

The girl was also red in the face and her eyes were stormy. Clearly, she was not happy. Perhaps a bit mortified as well.

"Get me out of here!" she screamed, kicking her only freed leg in the air. Itachi thought he might have heard a splintering sound from inside the cupboard.

Five minutes and some creative, mildly painful contortions later, the young twelve-year-old girl was finally freed from her confinement in a household cupboard.

It seemed, from Shisui's frequent glances to him, that he was not the only one surprised by Sakura's temper. She had almost appeared to him as demure, polite, docile, even. She seemed more the type to be sharp-witted and snarky in her fury than explosive. Well, the two Uchiha silently agreed, they were quite wrong about that.

Her temper seemed to flare upon seeing the dinosaur's head resting on the table. "So," she practically scathed, "there better be a damn good backstory to this for you to have shoved a _child_ into your cabinet." She squinted at the dinosaur. "What's with this thing, anyway? Did you forget how to share toys or something?"

Shisui grinned. "You don't play around, do you? I bet you're the one who keeps your whole team in line."

This seemed to quell her temper. Sakura's eyes sparkled and she raised her nose. "Of course. Someone's gotta be the voice of reason on every team. And," she paused, pointing to the head on the table, "if your story's interesting enough, I promise not to tell Sasuke-kun it was you two who destroyed beloved childhood possession."

Itachi actually raised his brows. Shisui did the same, though it was more apparent on his face. They shared a brief look as they came to a silent agreement: the sheer audacity of this child was nothing short of terrifying. Shisui was probably wondering if she would develop any interest in Konoha's T&I division. Itachi was just hoping Sasuke knew not to anger his "annoying" teammate too much.

As always, when it came to the two of them, Shisui was the first to speak. "Wow," he said, with another grin, "You've seen it before? Sasuke must trust you a lot, then. He hates whenever I mention it. Hahaha, Itachi, remember when he-"

"I didn't ask for your life story," Sakura snapped. "I asked what was good enough for you to keep a child stuffed in a kitchen cabinet. Do you _know_ how weird that is?!"

"Do you _know_ that we can always include you in what happened to this thing?" Shisui quipped, smiling all too broadly.

He was getting impatient, Itachi noted. And desperate.

Shisui rested his chin on his hand, settling a very particular look on the young girl he was sitting next to. "You were looking for a birthday gift, weren't you? Maybe you snuck into his room-"

Sakura turned red. "W-What?!"

"-and happened to cause a bit of an accident, so to speak."

Sakura was biting her lower lip, a very real look of fear spreading in her eyes. Like this, she was once again, just the quiet, demure girl that Itachi had come to see her as. That feisty temper from before was just a front for her insecurities. Sakura was, for all intents an purposes, just your average civilian girl. And if he could see it, then he knew Shisui could. Which meant that Shisui was deliberately being an asshole.

Desperate, Itachi thought again and gave Shisui a disapproving look Itachi knew he saw but ignored.

Sakura surprised them both by abruptly standing up. She seemed to be forcing a glare to her face, from the way her hands shook at her sides and the way her lip trembled. Her eyes were incredibly bright, shining as if they were two gems immersed in water.

She was uncomfortable. She felt trapped.

She was scared.

Shisui seemed to have realized too, because there was a mortified look that had come on his face that told of how he had forgotten he was talking to a child raised by civilian parents. She was not shinobi by nature, and - genin or not - she was still a child.

Whom he had stuffed into a cabinet, he seemed to realize.

"H-Hey, I'm sorry. Don't take what I said seriously okay? I was just-"

"I'm leaving," Sakura declared in a voice that, impressively, didn't waver.

"Ah- Wait-! I'm sorry! I was desperate!"

Yes, Itachi agreed, yes he was.

"Don't touch me, you creep! God, you're just like Naruto!"

Perhaps that was why, after five minutes, she had finally come back to the kitchen table to inspect the mangled childhood treasure of Uchiha Sasuke. After witnessing Shisui behave like a child (which was more amusing than Itachi would have thought) and then hearing about how much sweet anmitsu an ANBU's salary could afford on a weekly basis, Sakura was back on board with helping them out once again.

"I didn't know Sasuke-kun was the type to hold long grudges," she remarked. Then, with a bit of curiosity in her voice, she leaned forward a bit and asked: "Aside from the bees and the snakes, what else did he do?"

Itachi had to smother a smile when he saw Shisui's face blanch. A myriad of horrors, no doubt, judging by the look on the man's face. Often, Itachi wondered how Sasuke developed this side to him. But that was like searching for the figurative needle in the haystack.

"Can we leave storytime until _after_ you fix this mess?"

"Fine." Sakura held out her hand. "Where's the rest of it?"

Itachi leaned back in his seat. "He's got it," he heard Shisui say, and saw Sakura turn to face him just as he stuck his hand inside his shirt and pulled out the body of the headless dinosaur. If Sakura found that weird, she certainly didn't _say_. Instead, she took it by its tail and looked at the damage.

"How did you say this happened?" she asked, staring at the two pieces in her hand with disbelief. "By the way, because there weren't originally any seams connecting these two parts, Sasuke-kun will still definitely know what happened to it."

Shisui made some kind of frustrated noise. "Maybe we should just throw it at Shiro and let the dog have his fun with it. Sasuke can't get mad at Shiro. Then he can't get mad at me."

Itachi actually considered this suggestion. Until he noticed how clean and even the head had been lopped from its body.

Sakura seemed to notice this, too. Her brows furrowed together. "That won't work."

"Excuse me?"

Sakura ran a finger along the edges of the fabric where it had once been connected to its body. "That shouldn't be able to explain a cut like this. Look, the cut is too even. There's not even a frayed edge. Well, there's _some_ fraying, but you can't expect me to believe it got chewed up by a dog." Sakura narrowed her eyes at Shisui. "I thought you were supposed to be an elite jounin. Are you really?"

Itachi felt his lips twitch into a smile. He let it happen.

Across the table, Shisui caught sight of it and sent him a withering look.

Itachi smothered a laugh.

Shisui just sighed. "Can you fix it?"

Sakura's eyes stayed narrowed and her lips were set in a frown. She sighed dramatically, throwing the damaged doll onto the table and crossing her arms. "I need a needle and some thread. _Green_ thread."

The two Uchiha sat in the kitchen, looking quietly at the girl as if she had asked for the sky to rain sweet anmitsu.

Sakura's brow furrowed again. "What?" she demanded exasperatedly. "Girls don't carry sewing supplies on a daily basis, if _that's_ what you're insinuating."

Shisui sent Itachi a quick, questioning look.

Itachi took a few seconds to rifle through some options. "Kaasan keeps a sewing kit. It might be in my parents' room. If not, we can ask Izumi."

"If she's back, you mean," Shisui corrected. "You heard Sasuke; Izumi hasn't been around. She might be away on a mission."

Itachi stood up. "Then we'll just have to find kaasan's sewing kit," he said, already making his way to his parents' room. Shisui followed closely at his heels, and Sakura tagged along a good distance away, her chakra wavering with an odd sort of hesitation and unfamiliarity.

Itachi walked down the annex leading to his parents' room, and paused in front of it. He had one hand on the door, ready to slide it open, when a thought occurred to him: he had never been inside his parents' bedroom before. It was off-limits. Not that it was enforced in any way; it was just a matter of respect. Itachi felt the familiar tinge of discomfort trailing his thoughts as it always did right before doing something he was certain would end in disgrace.

Shisui, apparently, had no qualms whatsoever about being steeped in disgrace, because he just walked right over and pulled open the doors.

"Nobody's gonna know," Shisui reassured him. "If it makes you feel any better, just say I made you do it. That always worked when we were kids."

Itachi allowed himself to frown miserably before carefully stepping into the room. Sakura, who had more respect than Shisui about entering someone's room without explicit permission, anxiously hung back by the doorway.

Shisui tossed her a grin over her shoulder. "C'mon," he encouraged in a manner Itachi found displeasing, "think of it as a recon mission. You need to hone a myriad of skills to be able to pull off a successful recon. Attention to detail, snap judgment, critical thinking..."

"And tact," Itachi added, eyeing the way Shisui was rummaging through some scrolls. Itachi recognized some of the seals; a few of them were blank and a handful of others toted labels for jutsu, weapons, information, and the like. One in particular, the one Shisui was now picking up and staring intently at, he knew was coded.

Suddenly, Itachi felt a strong foreboding stab his gut. "Shisui."

Shisui returned the scroll and withdrew his hand from the drawer, its contents back to the way they originally were, and closed it. He actually cracked a grin. "Old habits die hard, right?"

Itachi didn't reply.

A new drawer was open, one that all three of them furtively peered into at the same time.  
And froze.

Poking out from one of the lighter blankets was a pink object made entirely of clear plastic. It had a smooth, rounded tip and a thick length patterned with bumpy ridges.

It was a pink dildo.

Itachi slammed the drawer shut while Shisui turned on his heel and walked right out. He vaguely remembered hearing the doors rattle shut behind them; they were so far away by then, as far as they physically could manage to be at this moment.

To make matters worse, Sakura chased after their heels, calling out after them in her naivety:

"Wait! We didn't find the sewing kit!"

"What's that pink thing for?"

"Why are you walking so fast?"

They walked faster.

Itachi used all of his energy and focus to will the memory of what was found in his parents' room into the far, deep recesses of his mind. He was so preoccupied that he didn't notice the two very distinct chakra signatures in the kitchen belonging to his own family members until he quite literally walked into one of them.

"Niisan," his little brother started, "why are you walking so fast?"

Before Itachi could reply with a simple cover story, Shisui's hand on his shoulder stopped him.

"We're accepting our fate," Shisui answered for him, all but shoving Itachi aside as he burst into the kitchen.

"Uh-?" Sasuke only had time to say before Shisui rounded to the table, said a quick hello to Izumi (Izumi?), and took the remains of Sasuke's childhood toy in his hands.

" _I_ did this," Shisui began ardently, holding out the mangled stuffed dinosaur, " _I_ did this, and I'm _sorry_. It was by accident. I didn't mean to destroy your childhood toy-friend, or whatever, but it happened and I'm sorry."

Itachi watched Sasuke stare blankly at Shisui with an unexpected kind of calm. He also took note of Izumi at the kitchen table, thread and needle at the ready in her hand, her own sewing kit open at the table, and watching the whole scene with a frown.

Sakura's sudden presence behind him made him turn, which made Sasuke look over his shoulder as well and arch an eyebrow.

In turn, Sakura blinked owlishly and clasped her hands together, cheeks quickly turning pink. "U-Um… Hello," she said.

Sasuke turned skeptical eyes on Itachi. "You told me she went to Izumi-san."

Itachi's eyes flicked quickly to Izumi, who raised her own eyebrows in surprise.

"I was in the bathroom," Sakura blurted out suddenly, making Sasuke (and everyone else) turn towards her.

At this, most of the skepticism in Sasuke's eyes blinked away. "...Oh," he said. He turned back to his brother, eyes squinting in that way of his when he still didn't understand something. "Why didn't you just tell me she was in the bathroom?"

"Because she _wasn't_ in the bathroom," said Shisui, still clenching the ruined dinosaur in his hands. "She showed up in the garden looking for you and I asked her if she could sew this up. But then you were on your way, so I hid her."

The skepticism crept back in Sasuke's eyes as he glanced around the kitchen. "Hid her _where?"_ he asked in disbelief, and Itachi caught the way he was eyeing the pile of plates and bowls stacked up on the counter.

"That's not important," Sakura was quick to say, crossing the kitchen and heading to the back door. "Now, if you don't mind, I'm going to leave now because things are getting _waaay_ too weird. First there's this headless doll, then the cupboard thing, and then the pink _stick-_ "

"Pink stick…?" Sasuke echoed in confusion, looking to his brother again.

Itachi pointedly looked away, focusing on keeping himself from making any outward notion that he was trying to erase something from his mind. Izumi's frozen wide-eyed look of self-processing and speculation certainly did not help.

Sakura's ranting continued. " _I'm_ going to the bridge. We were supposed to be there _twenty minutes ago_ , and I _refuse_ to be later than Kakashi-sensei. That's humiliating."

Then, Sakura put on her sandals and shut the door behind her carefully so that it wasn't a rude slam, but loud enough to denote her frazzled nerves.

The four Uchiha fell into a contemplative silence together, letting the sound of Haruno Sakura's footsteps fill the kitchen all the way until it melted away to the sound of Shiro barking.

Then, the four of them collectively turned to look at the stuffed animal still in two pieces, and still in Shisui's hands, that apparently started it all.

Itachi crossed the kitchen to sit at the table across Izumi. He pulled the chair beside him out and tapped the surface of the table, looking at Shisui.

Shisui took his seat, and Sasuke took the remaining seat at the table next to Izumi, who was still holding out her threaded needle.

Izumi broke the silence first, calm and gentle and patient. She stretched out her empty hand toward Shisui. "May I have that, please?"

Shisui calmly deposited the body of the stuffed animal in her open hand, then waited until she maneuvered her grip before passing the head for her to pinch between two fingers.

"Thank you," said Izumi, and quickly began to stitch the two pieces together.

Shisui sighed and crossed his fingers together in front of his face, sending Sasuke a calm, even look across the table. "I'm sorry about your dinosaur," he said, with all the seriousness of a man talking of someone who had passed away.

Sasuke furrowed his brows. "You didn't do it."

Itachi saw the way Shisui's shoulders drew taut.

"This happened a week ago. Naruto tried to wake me up with a shuriken through my window. He miscalculated its trajectory and this happened." Sasuke gestured to the dinosaur in Izumi's hands. "I was going to throw it away when Izumi-san saw me on her way out of the compound. She offered to stitch it back when she returned. I told her I'd leave it on my window if she were to come back before I did on my mission."

"So," Shisui began without pause, his flat tone for some reason putting Itachi on edge, "what you're saying, is... I saw a dildo for no reason."

Itachi kicked Shisui in the shin and Izumi jumped in her seat, bumping the table with a start and pricking her finger in the process.

Sasuke just blinked slowly, a (thankful) testament to his degree of innocence. "A… A what?"

Shisui got up from the table, throwing his hands in the air. Several times, his mouth opened and shut to form words that he couldn't quite complete. In the end, he just shook his head and pinched the bridge of his nose. "That's it. I'm just- I'm out. I can't deal with this kid anymore. I'm requesting another mission."

"Oh?" Izumi looked up, lowering her work a bit. "But you just got back. Shouldn't you rest?"

"You call what I just went through a rest?"

"Hm," Izumi returned to her work. "Suit yourself."

Though she feigned disinterest, Itachi caught the careful, furtive glances she threw between Shisui and Sasuke with every stitch here and there. She sent some to Itachi, too, ones he knew meant that she wanted to talk.

Shisui's hand clapped Itachi's shoulder in a farewell. It also broke him away from the silent conversation between Izumi and himself. "Good luck in Kiri. Four months, right? Let's catch up when you get back."

Instead of answering right away, Itachi returned the touch by laying a hand at Shisui's wrist. " _If_ you promise to get some rest."

"A few days, then."

"A week."

"Two days"

"Four."

"...How about two?"

"Four days sounds fair," Sasuke piped up suddenly.

His interest in the topic was enough to make Shisui shut up.

"Four days to niisan's four months," Sasuke rationalized, not really looking in any one direction, but certainly not looking in Shisui's direction. "If you don't rest, you'll burn yourself right out. No use in dying that way, right?"

Shisui smiled (not grinned, but _smiled_ ) - and reached out with a hand to dishevel Sasuke's hair. "Good to see that you actually care, Sasuke."

Sasuke, to his credit, tolerated the act well, only keeping to scowling and shooting annoyed glares at Shisui instead of swiping his arm away. "Yeah, well. Someone has too when niisan's away."

Something warm came up in Itachi after hearing such words from his little brother. It seems like Kakashi-sensei, for all his latenesses and "annoying" idiosyncrasies, was doing more than training his genin in complex and demanding tactical skills.

"Yeah, but you gotta watch out for Itachi, too. You think I'm bad? Well, he's worse."

"Those words, I can agree with," Izumi chimed in. But there was no jovial lilt to her voice, and her eyes stayed on her work.

Sasuke, sensing the shift in atmosphere, stood up. "I'm gonna be late. I'm going to the bridge." He gave a short bow to Izumi in appreciative thanks before heading to the door.

Shisui, already standing, made for the front door. "I should take my leave, too. I need to see if Maka's healed yet. I might need her soon." He gave a quick nod to Sasuke, and then to Itachi. "Four days," he promised before he left.

Sasuke shut the door carefully behind him.

Izumi hurried the rest of hew sewing and swiftly packed her things.

"Thank you," Itachi said as she took her leave from the back door.

Izumi hesitated at the door for a moment, but she turned and smiled. "I'll bring you dango the next time I drop by," she offered.

"I would very much appreciate that."

Izumi gave a final farewell and left for her home.

And Itachi had eleven hours to himself before his next mission began.

.

.

.

.

.

When he met his team at the gates, he understood why Kakashi had told his students there would no training for "the next few days."

Itachi gave his partner a respectful bow. "I'm thankful for all that you've done for my brother," he said in greeting.

Hound nodded. "No need for thanks. They're an exuberant bunch. Very entertaining."

"I can imagine."

In the dark of the night, the two zipped through the trees to travel farther and farther from Konoha, in avid pursuit of the end to their mission.

Only one would return.


End file.
